Update? Yes, a Photo Update!

Blah, no updates for 8 months? Sounds like par for the course. Well, here are a bunch of photos for your enjoyment.

• New York – June 2009
• Al and Jen’s Wedding
• Jason’s Graduation

Enjoy!

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Busy Weekend

Long time no blog. Can you say “laziness”?

I suppose I could blame it on the wedding preparations, but as most people can guess, the groom really has less to do and less to worry about when it comes to making wedding plans. That said, I need to reserve some rooms in Sacramento this week so that my family will have some place to stay.

In other news, Happy day after Father’s Day. Hopefully, when my dad receives his present (a nice 20 inch LCD monitor to replace his wimpy 15 inch CRT), he will be able to see my web site in a fuller fashion.

Finally, this past weekend was my cousin Ken’s wedding, which occurred in one of my previous home town of Simi Valley. It was a very ordinary ceremony until Batman showed up! You can see what I am talking about at:

• Ken and Angela’s Wedding Photos

Also, for those of you who did not see my engagement photos, they are at:

• Kevin and Shareena’s Engagement Photos

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A Couple of Trips to Tampa

Went to Tampa for a week to make sure my dad was ok. Nothing to be alarmed…all is well.

I got a call from my dad a couple of weeks ago and surprisingly, he was in the hospital. What was first diagnosed as pneumonia turned out to be a problem with his mitral valve not functioning properly, causing mitral regurgitation (basically the leaking of blood back from the left ventricle to the left atrium). And thus, open heart surgery was necessary to fix the problem.

Fortunately, my dad was otherwise very healthy and thus, there were no other major problems to resolve (like blocked arteries). His heart was out of rhythm (atrial fibrillation) due to his mitral valve problem, which was corrected with the maze procedure. While atrial fibrillation normally would not automatically mean the performance of the maze procedure on the patient, in my dad’s case, this was advisable as he was already having open heart surgery to correct the mitral valve. So, both procedures were performed.

In short, all went well and my dad is back home (5 days after surgery). He just cannot drive and have many other restrictions (not diet though, normal food day after surgery). Apparently his heart works so well now, my dad’s blood pressure was a bit high. Hopefully, this is just a temporary issue, but we shall see.

Shareena and I will be spending Thanksgiving (and fighting Thanksgiving travelers at the airport) in Tampa. We are hoping to find some usable pots and pans and cook some cornish hens for Thanksgiving.

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Vegas Vacation

As usual, I am a few weeks late with my latest adventure, but at least I do eventually managed to get my thoughts on the hard disk.

So a couple of weekends ago, I flew off to Las Vegas to meet with my cousins from my mother’s side to have much, much fun. After being picked up by Ken and his girlfriend, Angela; Henry; and Vivian, we hung out at the Hilton Grand Vacation Club, where we had a suite (though we did not take advantage of the kitchen, it was still quite spacious), and after my cousins (originally from Chicago) Angie, Jack and Judy arrived at the suite, we talked some more and before you knew it, there was a bet going on.

As Angie, Jack and Judy were about to leave, Judy asked whether or not anyone wanted to run with her on Friday morning as she is training for a 10 mile run. One thing led to another and before long, Angie and Ken were challenging each other to see who can run better and longer. Eventually, they settled on seeing on who can run 1 mile the fastest and I managed to sucker Henry into placing a wager for Angie with 3 to 1 odds (so I put in $20 for Ken to win and Henry put in $7 for Angie and winner takes all). Well, the race apparently did not last long and a short time after the start, Angie decided to stop and lie on the ashphalt to rest.

Besides this small wager, we had quite a good time gambling, eating, clubbing, drinking and doing all the normal Vegas things. I managed to break even (despite some pretty big ups and downs at the Blackjack table) thanks to my placing 7th (first money spot) in a No-Limit Texas Hold-em poker tournament where Albert, Stanley and Henry also entered (with about 100 players total). I must admit, things did not look very good for me at the first break as I was low on the chip stack compared to my cousins, but a few all-ins later, I tripled up a couple of times and was back in business. In the end, my luck failed at the first “opportune” time as I went all in with A-7, only to be called by the chip stack leader with A-6…and then watching as a 6 came up on the flop. So yes, there is some skill in poker, but don’t kid yourself if you think it is all skill.

All in all, I had lots of fun despite not getting very much sleep (I think I slept about 3 hours a night for 3 straight days), so I suppose I am just now getting back to normal (though it is never normal when as I sometimes come into work at 6am to restart the servers) and that’s why it has taken me so long to write this entry. Now if you believe this, then I do have a future as a poker player.

Picture from Vegas (thanks to Judy).

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Nintendo Gamecube and Other Christmas Adventures

Well, be careful what you put on your Christmas wish list (especially if you put it at spot #1).

So I got my Gamecube and Mario Kart: Double Dash for Christmas. After less than 2 weeks, I have mastered the game against the computer and have unlocked all the secrets. Now I am doing some of the time trials (which I think you really should do first to get familiar with the tracks before you do the Grand Prix, but I like to jump into things and figure it out as you go along) and trying to unlock the “staff ghost” which is actually pretty hard.

The drawback of getting the Gamecube is that Nintendo has not released many really good games (in my opinion). There is Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles coming out, so I will take a look at that and a couple of old Zelda games that came with the Gamecube, but one of them is so disorienting that it nearly made me sick. On top of it all, I will probably have a job soon, so it really doesn’t matter.

I had a pretty good time back in California visiting relatives and friends. Mostly, it was normal stuff: gambling with Grandma and relatives (mahjong – hey, I think I almost broke even this time), spending time with friends, snowboarding and watching movies (though not as many as usual). The only really odd thing was that both when I left and came back to Shareena’s parents’ house in Sacramento, the power went out. When I left, it wasn’t much trouble, except that since there was no power in the refrigerator, I couldn’t find the leftover meat/cheese from our snowboarding trip to make sandwiches. However, when I came back up and the power was out (and it was out for over 12 hours), I was unable to do my laundry and Shareena had to pack in the dark. So that was quite fun to say the least.

Finally, Chicago get its first real snowstorm this winter as three inches of snow was piled onto poor Charlie (Shareena’s name for her blue Honda Civic). It took 15 minutes just to remove the snow off of him to take Shareena to the gym. Quite fun again.

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